


New Love

by genevievedarcygranger



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Fluff, Female Reader, Fluff, Marriage, Married Couple, Married Life, Mentions of Pregnancy, Mentions of childbirth, One Shot, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, Parenthood, Reader-Insert, Romance, Short One Shot, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff, fem reader - Freeform, mentions of breastfeeding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29577015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genevievedarcygranger/pseuds/genevievedarcygranger
Summary: It’s your first Valentine’s Day with Morgan as new parents, but you might’ve forgotten the date.
Relationships: Derek Morgan/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	New Love

You thought you knew exhaustion. You’d been tired before, of course, everyone has. One really bad case of pneumonia. Pulling all-nighters in your twenties between college classes and bar-hopping and frat parties. Catching a flight home for the holidays and being jetlagged the entire time you’re with your family. But this, this was different.

The infant on your chest was a little over a week old and for once, was sleeping peacefully. It was your heartbeat, you knew, that kept the little one so calm and happy all swaddled up in your arms and the new baby blanket that Penelope had knitted herself. The material was soft, fuzzy, and a soft buttery yellow. Penelope must have imbued love and magic into every stitch to hold the warmth in this blanket for so long after its use. Your son loved it. Your son. You sighed.

“Hey Mama,” Derek’s voice was a gentle croon from the doorway to the nursery. He just had his head sticking around the corner, a sight that would have drawn laughter from you had you not been so tired and – much like him – so afraid to wake the baby. “You coming to bed yet?”

Letting your head loll back against the head cushion on the rocking chair Hotch gave you at the baby shower, you huffed through your nose. “No.” Your voice was a croak. “If I put him down, he’ll scream.”

Derek smiled, not quite laughing at you, much too kind for that. His smile, your favorite sight in the world (or used to be) was much too bright compared to your bone-deep weariness. But his smile still filled you with air, made you feel like your stomach would balloon up, in a good way, until you’d lift off of the ground with your toes dangling in the air. It had been that way since you met him, and the feeling had not dimmed with time. You hoped it never would.

“I was gonna wait to give you this, but since you’re awake, I should give it to you now.”

“Give me what?” You spoke low, one eye always on the baby. Hank. “Don’t tell me that if they call you, you have to go. I thought they were going to give you paternity leave?”

Finally pulling the rest of his body into the room, Derek waved one hand at you in a placating gesture while the other remained firmly behind his broad back. “No, that’s not what I meant, Mama. I have my paternity leave, don’t you worry. I was talking more about when our little man starts taking up all of our attention again and we’re running around each other between washing bottles and changing diapers.”

Just at the mention, you wrinkled your nose. “Don’t remind me.” Carefully, you shifted in the rocking chair, just barely jostling Hank against your chest. He slept on, undisturbed, his chubby cheek snuggled against the top of your breast, preserving your modesty. Which was laughable since Derek was in that hospital room and he saw everything when his son was born. You’d been a little too drugged to care at the time, but it was catching up with you now just how awkward that was.

Again, laughable. Derek was your husband. But you were new to all of this. The world had never felt so new before. Nothing could have prepared you. You just had to experience everything again like it was the first time.

Blinking the sleep out of your eyes, you craned your neck up at Derek. “What do you want to show me?”

With a twinkle in his eye that made him two decades younger than what he was, Derek pulled out a box of chocolate from behind his back, a teddy bear stubbornly clinging to it. The two were held together with a sparkly red ribbon, much like how you felt like you were only being held together with the tie of the ratty robe you’d been living in since your return from the hospital. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he told you softly.

For a moment, you just stared at it without comprehending a thing. Your sleep-addled brain dredged up the memory of your son’s birth. Hank was born on the fifth of February, way too early in the morning at 8:38 a.m. Definitely too early since you didn’t ever go to bed the night before, fighting what you thought were Braxton Hicks until your water officially broke somewhere around midnight. You came home from the hospital… some time ago. Was it really possible it was already the fourteenth?

Tears started to well up in your eyes, and the smile immediately dropped away from Derek’s face. “What? What is it?” Despite the length of your pregnancy, Derek never took your tears well, though they were a regular occurrence.

“Derek, I’m so sorry, I don’t have anything for you.” A few tears spilled across your cheeks, but Derek’s gentle, calloused fingertips were already there to catch them. “I forgot all about Valentine’s Day. I’m so stupid.”

“No, you’re not. We’ve been busy,” Derek told you with measured patience. He diligently continued to thumb away your tears. “We’ve got our little man. I didn’t expect you to get me anything. I wouldn’t have even remembered if Penelope hadn’t shot me a text today to remind me.” With a rueful sort of look, he added, “She told me to get you flowers, and I did. They’re already in the kitchen. I got them last night when you sent me to the gas station last night. But the bear and chocolates were my idea.”

Sniffling, you lifted one hand from your infant to finger the velvety ear of the bear. “You did this for me?” It should speak volumes how much your exhaustion got in the way of rational thought that you were so surprised to receive a Valentine from your husband.

“You’re the mother of my child, my wife,” Derek reminds you, and finally settles down on his knees beside the rocking chair, his own exhaustion catching up to him. He thought he knew exhaustion when he worked for the FBI, but it had nothing on fatherhood. It had to be fatherhood and not that he was just getting older.

Reaching up, Derek cupped his large palm across your cheek. You leaned against it heavily, soaking up his warmth and love. “I love you, Mama.”

With a sort of delirious smile, you asked, “Will you still love me if I give the bear to Hank instead? I want to give him something for his first Valentine’s Day.”

Shaking his head at you in amusement, Derek snorted, “Like he needs another stuffed animal.” But he didn’t say no. “Would you like your chocolates now or later?”

Tucking your hand back around Hank’s body, you considered the offer. You wouldn’t get a chance to eat any later without stuffing your mouth, and chocolate sounded perfect. “Um… can you feed it to me?” You cringed, even as you asked, but you needed both arms to support Hank’s weight comfortably, and even then, your muscles felt like they couldn’t be trusted. The foot that you weren’t using to rock the chair was asleep, the sensation of crawling ants signaling that to you. “You can have half if you feed it to me.”

“You weren’t gonna share with me?” Derek asked in mock affront, but he started opening the box anyway. He had the forethought to do the work for you ahead of time so you wouldn’t wake the baby, clearly prepared for you to eat these chocolates now at whatever ungodly sunless hour it was rather than waiting for a normal time. Your husband knew you so well.

“Which chocolate do you want?”

Well, almost so well.

“One of the nougat ones.” Almost absentmindedly, you dropped a kiss to Hank’s forehead, your lips just barely grazing his warm skin. He smelled milky, but also fresh, so it was not an unpleasant smell. “You can eat the coconut ones; I don’t like those.”

Grinning like a boy, Derek shoved a coconut chocolate in his mouth first. “Those are my favorite anyway.” With more care, he plucked a nougat filled chocolate and held it up to your mouth. You opened for it and let him place it on your tongue, the chocolate starting to melt almost immediately. Derek’s thumb dragged over your bottom lip just so as he withdrew his hand. You shot him a look that said everything, all your gratefulness, and he smirked at you like he did when you first started dating.

Words fell off between you as Derek slowly handfed you and himself. When the chocolate was gone, he closed the box again, and settled from his knees to sitting fully on the floor. He clutched the teddy bear in his lap, rhythmically stroking the chocolate fur on its belly without thinking about it. You were both too tired to think, too tired to move, too tired to put the baby in his crib so you both could sleep in a real bed. The two of you knew better. Hank would be hungry or wet or crying as soon as your heads touched the pillow. So you settled in for your favorite habit. 

You both were obsessed with looking at him, crooning over how small he was, how much hair he had, the folds of fat on his legs and the little wrinkles on the knuckles of his tiny little fingers. More than that, though, you loved watching Derek watch over Hank. There was this pride – all male – that flushed over his eyes like a new pair of over expensive sunglasses. You were sure you had a similar look whenever you looked at your son, too. You remembered the hospital room, how you tilted your arms just so to show Hank off to your visitors.

But there wasn’t just pride in Derek’s eyes when he looked at Hank. There was love, too, so sweet and soft. It poured from him like an invisible stream between his eyes to the infant. The love washed over Hank whenever Derek’s big hands dwarfed his little body, when he carefully pulled on his little mittens and booties to keep his extremities warm, when he brushed a fingertip over his forehead and curls and lips.

You thought you knew love. You’d had your fair share of bad luck and rocky relationships before Derek, though he had a different experience altogether. He had told you he never really fell in love or had girlfriends. Just people he hooked up with. To say that he loved you, that he fell in love with and married you… And in your case, the love you had with Derek was strong. It wasn’t obsessive. You both had careers that consumed you, but he was never far from your mind. Being in love with Derek Morgan was like knowing that the sun rose and fell every day just for you. It was warmth and reassurance and steady.

But this was so much different. Being a new parent meant that you experienced a new kind of love. The moment that Hank was placed in your arms, it was like this fuzzy veil was lifted from your eyes. Even though he was squalling and he was still a little slimy, he was the most beautiful – it was love at first sight, plain and simple. You didn’t believe in love at first sight, but parenthood proved otherwise. When the nurse guided you through the tricky latching process the first time, even though Hank was the newborn, you felt like you were reborn. It was overwhelming. Consuming. It would have scared you, except when you looked at Hank and then when you looked at Derek and knew he felt the same way you did.

You thought you knew love, and now you’re sure. This is love.


End file.
